1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a reproducing apparatus and, in particular, to an apparatus for reproducing movie data from a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are apparatuses for recording movie data on and reproducing movie data from a random access medium, such as a digital versatile disk (DVD), a hard disk, or a semiconductor memory. An apparatus of this kind encodes movie data using an encoding scheme, such as moving picture experts group 2 (MPEG-2) or H.264, to compress the amount of information thereof and then records the compressed data. In reproducing the recorded movie data, the apparatus decodes the compressed movie data after reproducing the data from a storage medium. This kind of apparatus typically records the movie data as a file in accordance with a predetermined file system.
The apparatus also records information, such as the resolution, frame rate, and aspect ratio of the movie image, connection relationship to other movie data, and information associating reproduction time with information indicating an address on a storage medium, separately from the movie data. Recording information related to movie data as a file in such a way allows the apparatus to obtain the information for the movie data recorded on a storage medium before reproducing the movie data, so the apparatus can quickly start reproducing the movie image. Additionally, the apparatus can perform a special reproduction operation on the movie image, for example, fast forward reproduction.
This kind of apparatus may record one movie file and one movie information file associated with the move file for one image capture.
In this case, the movie file and the movie information file are in one-to-one correspondence. In this case, the number of movie files and the number of movie information files therefor recorded on a storage medium increase with an increase in the number of image captures.
Because various kinds of information for a movie data element are stored in a movie information file, the apparatus can achieve smooth continuous reproduction of movie data elements by reading all movie information files in advance and reproducing the movie data elements while referring to the additional information for the movie data elements.
There is a known capability of previously recording a playlist that stores order in which movie files are reproduced and the reproduction time of each of the movie files, separately from the above-described movie information files, on a storage medium and of reproducing recorded movie data in accordance with the playlist.
That is, in reproducing movie data elements in accordance with a playlist, the playlist is read from a storage medium in advance, and then a file of a movie data element specified by the playlist is read from the storage medium.
However, if the playlist is not recorded on the storage medium for some reason, a problem of lack of the order in which the movie data elements are reproduced arises.
One approach to preparing for such a case is a method for restoring the original playlist using the playlist temporarily recorded with a different file name if the playlist is lost (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-206742).
Unfortunately, with the method described in the above-mentioned patent document, a reproduction information file cannot be restored from a storage medium on which data is recorded in another apparatus because the playlist is recorded as a different file.
In addition, the method described in the above-mentioned patent document has a problem of necessity for an area for use in recording a different file on a storage medium.